Sunday, May 17, 2015

Let Slip the Dogs of War, Part 3

This is a tale about growing up, going from puppyhood to
doghood. It begins on a hot day in eastern North Carolina.

At daybreak, April 19, 1862, the 1,952 men who belonged to
Colonel Rush Hawkins’s brigade reached a small village called Shiloh, which sat
near the beaches of the Pasquotank River. Several hours earlier, at 3 A.M., these Union
troops had slogged their way ashore, disembarking a fleet of poorly-anchored U.S. Navy transports.
Hawkins’s brigade possessed orders to reach the main road on the peninsula and march north
to Norfolk, passing through the town of Camden. Somewhere beyond that point,
the bluecoats expected to meet Confederate resistance, and as it later transpired, a battle
did indeed erupt. At 3 P.M., Hawkins’s brigade and another Union brigade slammed against a
defensive position at the canal village of South Mills, resulting in a two-hour
battle that cost the bluecoats 120 casualties.

But that is another story. As of daybreak, Hawkins’s
men were still hours from their destination, seasick, and hungry. Somewhere
near Shiloh village—or perhaps beyond it—soldiers belonging to Company I, 6th
New Hampshire Infantry, scoured the area looking for water and forage. An unnamed
soldier from that company found a farm house. Underneath the porch, in the
shade, he found a dog and her litter of three-month-old puppies. The unnamed soldier coaxed the three puppies to come to him, and
when one of the dogs took a liking to that attention, the soldier determined to take the little fella along. Not long after, the drums roared the call to “fall
in,” and the New Hampshire soldier realized his dilemma. Somehow, he needed
to carry the puppy along with his other gear. “How to carry him was a puzzle,” the soldier later wrote. “I
had on a pair of boots which I wore from home; these I took off, and tying the
straps at the top, [I] put the puppy into one boot, and throwing the pair over
my shoulders went thus into battle, . . . puppy and all.”

Nine hours (and many miles) later, when the 6th
New Hampshire struck the Confederate line near South Mills, the unnamed Union
soldier and his puppy endured the ferocity of combat together (with the dog still slung blissfully on the soldier’s back). As it
happened, both man and dog narrowly dodged a cannon ball. A solid shot struck
the sand in front of the regiment, causing most of the soldiers to duck. The unnamed private
hit the dirt, but the man in front of him, Private Curtis Flanders, remained standing,
taking the brunt of the projectile, falling dead over the soldier and his
canine companion. (Flanders was, incidentally, the first soldier from the
regiment to be killed in battle.)

The soldier and his puppy came out of the battle unscathed,
and in fact, along with three other New Hampshire soldiers, they stole a buggy
from a nearby home and rode it back to the Pasquotank River during the Union
retreat, taking with them a number of pilfered chickens.

After that, the dog became a permanent member of the
regiment. The soldiers named him Jep, and he stood in line with the regiment
every day at morning roll call, barking when the orderly sergeant called his name. One soldier
later wrote, “The boys were very much attached to him, because he showed so
much courage and such true loyalty to the regiment, notwithstanding his ‘Southern
birth’.” No one ever specified what breed of dog he was, but the few accounts that
described him suggested that Jep was possibly a mix of blood hound and Yellow Labrador
retriever.

Jep served with the 6th New Hampshire for more than
two years, campaigning with the regiment as the war took the regiment to North Carolina,
Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Virginia. The regimental
historian remarked, “Dogs generally fear firearms when discharged in volleys,
but this one went into battle and stuck by to the end.” Circumstances are not
clear, but it appears that Jep was killed in action on September 30, 1864, at
the Battle of Poplar Springs Church. The morning after the battle, Jep failed
to put in his usual appearance at roll call, and as regimental historian Lyman Jackman
asserted, “it was always supposed that he was killed the day before, as he was
seen in the hottest of the fight.”

The veterans of the 6th New Hampshire felt
tremendous sadness at the loss of their beloved dog. It needs no repeating from
me a truism, that most dogs, when treated well, become like family. Dogs adore having both place
and purpose. In the 6th New Hampshire, Jep had both. (Also, he had
about 300 friendly soldiers who could give him a good belly rub at a moment’s
notice, which is all any dog really wants.) He spent a preciously short period of time
on this earth. It warms my heart to know that for his two years of doghood, Jep
spent it with a good set of men. It isn’t the duration of our time alive that determines the quality of our existence, but how often we spend it doing what we love, and with whom we love.

This is "Old Jep," the 6th New Hampshire's regimental mascot. He was born in Eastern North Carolina in February 1862, but was killed-in-action, September 30, 1864.